Indian investors already have ways to buy US shares. MochaTrade is going after a different audience: active traders who want to take leveraged long or short positions on US stock prices without opening a traditional US brokerage account.
The Y Combinator-backed startup has raised $5.5 million in seed funding, led by CoinFund with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Zero Knowledge Ventures. The capital will be used to strengthen its trading engine, risk infrastructure and customer acquisition as the company prepares for a broader public rollout.
Founded in 2026 by Utkarsh Sinha, Chetan Manda and Parth Maheshwari, MochaTrade is building a platform for perpetual futures and other price-tracking contracts linked to US stocks, cryptocurrencies, commodities and major indices. Unlike buying a share directly, users of these contracts do not own the underlying stock. Instead, they take positions on whether its price will rise or fall.
The localisation is central to the product. MochaTrade plans to let Indian users fund accounts through UPI, while balances, margins and profit-and-loss are displayed in rupees. The aim is to remove some of the friction around dollar balances, overseas transfers and unfamiliar trading interfaces. The startup says its waitlist has already crossed 25,000 sign-ups; it remains in beta, with a wider launch expected after early access.
The platform will also support leverage, which can magnify losses as well as gains. MochaTrade plans to generate revenue through trading fees and eventually add US stock options, contracts tied to selected pre-IPO companies and social-trading features, subject to applicable laws and regulatory approvals.
Through its Indian entity, the company is registered with FIU-IND as a virtual digital asset service provider and reporting entity for anti-money-laundering purposes. That registration should not be read as regulatory approval of every product the platform offers or plans to introduce.
MochaTrade’s bigger bet is not simply that Indians want exposure to US markets. It is that active global trading becomes a much larger category when the entire experience — funding, risk and P&L — feels built around an Indian trader from the start.
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Startup Unplugged
